General budget will be farmer friendly: Manmohan Singh

New Delhi, Feb 25 : Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh today assured a delegation of farmers from Punjab led by former Punjab Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal, that the general budget should be farmer friendly.

Addressing the delegation here, Dr, Singh said: "The budget will be presented in 3 days and it is not appropriate on my part to divulge the details mentioned therein but I can assure you that whatever demands you have mentioned in memorandum, our government will take care of it."

Meanwhile, Congress party president Sonia Gandhi said that the government is very much concerned about the difficulties faced by farmers.

"This government have always taken care of farmers' needs. We have increased the minimum support price of wheat and rice like never before and have also given other benefits as we know the kind of difficulties faced by farmers," Sonia added.

As this budget will be the last budget before a series of Assembly elections this year and the general election next year, there are a lot of expectations from the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government to go all out to cheer the common man with several sops.

About 87 per cent marginal farmers and 70 per cent of small farmers have no access to credit from a formal financial institution, the World Bank said, adding that they often have to rely on extortionist money lenders.

ANI